ed that way. "Know a man name of Kenner?" He
asked abruptly.

The fellow looked at Casey sidelong, without turning his head.

"Some. Do you?"

"Some." Casey felt that he was making headway, though it was a good
deal like playing checkers with the king row wide open and only two
crowned heads to defend his men.

"Friend uh yours?" The fellow turned his head and looked straight at
Casey.

Casey returned him a pale, straight-lidded stare. The man's glance
flickered and swung away.

"Who wants to know?" Casey asked calmly.

"Oh, you can call me Jim Cassidy. I just asked." He removed his pipe
from his mouth and inspected it apathetically. "He's a friend of Bill
Masters, garage man up at Lund. Know Bill?"

"Any man says I don't, you can call 'im a liar." Casey also inspected
his pipe. "Bought that car off'n Kenner," Casey added boldly. Getting
into trouble, he discovered, carried almost the thrill of trying to
keep out of it.

"Yeah?" The self-styled Jim Cassidy looked at the Ford more
attentively. "And contents?"

Casey snorted. "What do you know about goats, if anything?" he asked
mysteriously.

Jim Cassidy eyed Casey sidelong through a silence. Then he brought his
palm down flat on his thigh and laughed.

"You pass," he stated, with a relieved sigh. "He's a dinger, ain't he?"

"You know 'im, all right." Casey also laughed and put out his hand. "If
you're a friend of Kenner's, shake hands with Casey Ryan! He's damned
glad to meet yuh--an' you can ask anybody if that ain't the truth."

After that the acquaintance progressed more smoothly. By the time
Casey spread his bed close alongside the car--he knew just how much
booze Jim Cassidy carried, just what Cassidy expected to make off the
load, and a good many other bits of information of no particular use to
Casey.

A strange, inner excitement held Casey awake long after Jim Cassidy was
asleep snoring. He lay looking up into the leafy branches of the
sycamore beside him and watched a star slip slowly across an open space
between the branches. Farther up the grove a hilarious group of young
hikers sang snatches of songs to the uncertain accompaniment of a
ukelele. A hundred feet away on his right, occasional cars went
coasting past on the down grade, coming in off the desert, or climbed
more slowly with motors working, on their way up from the valley below.
The shifting brilliance from their headlights flicked the grove
capriciously as